Tag Archives: Narnia

The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books by John Carey (Faber and Faber, 2014)

Professor John Carey

My holiday reading last week took an unexpected turn – it turned out to be yet another bout of Inklings Studies instead of a holiday. Not that I’m complaining. It was a fantastic surprise to find Prof John Carey’s new autobiography on the shelf in a friend’s loo and to see it contained accounts of encounters with C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien, Hugo Dyson, Neville Coghill, Helen Gardner, Lord David Cecil, and Austin and Katherine Farrer. True, they don’t all come out of it very well, but I’m as fascinated as the next fan of the Inklings by first hand reports of them and their friends. We all want to know ‘What was it like to meet Lewis or Tolkien? What did they look and sound like? How did they smile, laugh? Did they have any odd habits we don’t know about? And what was it like to study with them or be their college colleague?’ Carey, Emeritus Professor of English at Merton College, gives us some fascinating glimpses as he tells of his own experience in the Oxford of the 1950s onwards.

With it being an autobiography, obviously Carey tells us a great deal about his own life and background which is fascinating in itself. He was born in London in 1934 and can remember the Silver Jubilee celebrations for King George V in 1935 (an elephant in a street parade in particular) and the fiery glare in the sky of the destruction of the Crystal Palace in 1936. I was particularly interested in the time he spent as a boy in Nottingham, my own home town, where he was evacuated in the Second World War for safety. But I will confine myself to Oxford and the Inklings…

Winning a scholarship to study at Oxford meant that Carey experienced the English Faculty there in the 1950s. He is scathing about the archaic nature of the syllabus (“a scandal or a joke, depending on your sense of humour”) which of course Lewis and Tolkien had helped to design. It stopped at 1832, seeming to assume that everyone would read Victorian literature for pleasure anyway and that modern stuff wasn’t worth studying, or at the very least, the jury was out. The syllabus had been heavily weighted towards Anglo-Saxon and early Middle English (pre-1300), “on the grounds, I suppose, that since no one could conceivably read them for pleasure they suited the rigorous demands of an academic discipline.” [1] Carey was a fan of the Modernists and found delving back into Anglo-Saxon a great chore: “Apart from Beowulf only three or four poems are worth reading…” [2] But it was a tremendous luxury to be able to read all day and Carey loved the Oxford tutorial system with its one-on-one time each week with some of the greatest experts on the planet. Lectures, he found, were sometimes a waste of time. “J. R. R. Tolkien, lecturing on Beowulf was mostly inaudible and, when audible, incomprehensible. He seemed immemorially aged, and green mildew grew on his gown, as if he had recently emerged from a wood.” [3]

Despite these seeming setbacks to his enjoyment, Carey achieved a First in his degree and set about applying for scholarships for postgraduate study. His interview at Merton for a Harmsworth Senior Scholarship was with Hugo Dyson, who had already examined him as an undergraduate: “…Dyson, an Oxford ‘character’, known for his wit. I always found him alarming. He was like a hyperactive gnome, and stumped around on a walking-stick which, when he was seized by one of his paroxysms of laughter, he would beat up and down as if trying to drive it through the floor. It brought to mind Rumpelstiltskin driving his leg into the ground in the fairy tale.” [4] Carey acknowledges that Dyson was one of the famous Inklings and had had a role with Tolkien in bringing C S Lewis to the Christian faith: “So he was, at least in part, responsible for the Narnia books.” [5] But Carey never asked him about it. He does quote the famous story, however, of Dyson cutting off the reading of The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien at the Inklings with his protest: “Oh, not another ******* elf!” [6] But Carey was certainly impressed with Dyson’s humour: “On a good day he was the funniest man I ever met…”, second only to Peter Ustinov who could do mimicry as well, although he always seemed more ‘rehearsed’, “whereas Dyson was famous for his spontaneity. It was said that, one evening in Merton when there was duck on the menu, and the bird served was not duck but pheasant, he remarked, ‘Ah, le mallard imaginaire.” [7]

But on the day of Carey’s interview for the scholarship at Merton he had the surprise of finding that, not only was he introduced to all the Fellows, he was expected to play bowls (called ‘woods’) with them on the lawn of the Fellows’ Quad after dinner, amongst whom was Prof Tolkien. (I too have a Tolkien-related memory of having dinner with the Fellows at Merton when I was a Curate at St Aldate’s church, unfortunately when the Professor himself was long gone. It was around 1994 and we had wandered on the Fellows’ Quad and seen the ruin of the many irises lining the medieval wall, apparently caused by the visit the day before of President Clinton whose helicopter landing in the field next door had whipped off all the flowers, spoiling what should have been a beautiful show. I then had post-prandial drinks in a Fellow’s rooms who casually mentioned that they were the rooms occupied by Tolkien. There was not much there other than bookshelves and a desk and my main memory is of everything painted white. In those days I didn’t have a camera on me, so that was that. The Merton Fellow seemed as nonchalant about it as all in Oxford are who are used to that sort of thing.)

One intriguing detail of what it was like to be a postgrad in English in the Oxford of the 1950s is that Carey had to take two introductory courses in order to specialise in 17th century literature – how to decipher 17th century handwriting, and how to set up a page of type and print on an old handpress in the Bodleian Library, just like a 17th century compositor. Apparently those on the course made authentic-looking 17th century Christmas cards that year!

The other major part of a postgrad’s life is of course Supervision. Carey is critical of the standard of supervision in Oxford in those days. He refers to Kingsley Amis’ description in his Memoirs of Lord David Cecil’s non-cooperation and unavailability for him. But he particularly singles out Dyson for his lackadaisical approach to his postgrads: “…Dyson would slam down a fistful of coin on the mantelpiece, explain derisively that this was all the university paid him for the supervision, and suggest he and [the student] go off and ‘drink it’ in a pub.” [8] (I’m sure there are a lot of us who would pay good money for the chance of a drink in a pub with Dyson, but anyway…)

Carey feels he was lucky to have Helen Gardner as his supervisor. She may have been scary at times, reducing some students to tears, and have knitted during supervisions, but she was brilliant and helpful. Most people at the time, apparently, thought she should have been given the Merton Professorship of English that went to Neville Coghill. Carey writes: “I met Coghill, a tall, twitchy, gentle man with a face full of care.” Coghill was so nervous about giving his inaugural address as Professor that he asked Carey to second for him and read his lecture in case on the day he couldn’t go through with it. Fortunately Coghill managed.

Carey doesn’t seem to have come across C S Lewis much apart from one main encounter at Keble College. The new Warden of Keble in 1960 was the philosopher and theologian Austin Farrer who had just moved there with his wife Katherine, the detective novelist. Carey had managed to get a job there and moved into the same building as the Farrers at the same time. He was hugely impressed with Farrer: “He was lean, quick and witty, and seemed to me – though he was well into middle age – like one of Jane Austen’s clergymen – Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, say. His wife Kay was tiny, sharp and so neurotic you imagined she’d emit a shower of sparks if placed in a dark room… [She] talked in a series of rapid squeaks that were hard to interpret…. Farrer was the nearest thing to a saint I have met, but he was capable of asperity, as saints no doubt need to be.” [9] Farrer was always very considerate to the Careys and invited them one day to lunch to meet Lewis. Both Carey and his wife had Firsts in English and were in awe of Lewis’ “prodigiously learned” The Allegory of Love, “besides, he had a ferocious reputation as a tutor and was famed for having challenged an undergraduate who failed to share his passion for Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum to a sword-fight. However, he was not at all intimidating that day. He had walked down across the University Parks from his home in Headington Quarry, and strode into the room, rubicund and tweedy, with a knapsack slung over his shoulder, like a farmer on holiday.” [10] There were only the Farrers, the Careys and Lewis at lunch that day in “mahoghany-and-damask splendour”, eating stuffed onions served by a housekeeper.

They spoke on literature, as one would expect, and Lewis quoted a line from a poem, “It was a little budding rose”, but couldn’t remember where it was from. Carey reports his ambivalence at saying the source in such august company and showing up their ignorance, as he just happened to have read the Emily Bronte poem that contained the line that week. But he needn’t have worried, as “both Lewis and Farrer were obviously delighted to be enlightened, and showed not the least trace of pique, so in character-test terms they won by an enormous margin….” [11]

Carey had been raised in a Christian context but had lapsed from the faith. However, he seems to have remained fascinated by faith in others, especially the devotional poets of the 17th century. He was also impressed by Farrer’s preaching at Keble chapel. “In the pulpit… Farrer’s personality changed. He would start very quietly, almost in a whisper, and gradually work himself up into a soaring climax, as if the Holy Spirit had entered him, as perhaps it had. I was not a regular chapel-goer but I tried not to miss his sermons because I was interested in the histrionics.” [12]

Another of Carey’s jobs in Oxford was that of Fellow at St John’s College in 1965, teaching medieval literature alongside Tom Shippey who was later to become such an authority on Tolkien. At this point Carey identifies Shippey as “a science fiction fanatic” [13]. Carey is now Emeritus Merton Professor of English, aged 80, having retired in 2011 after a distinguished career at his alma mater and as a writer and critic.

It is sad that he always felt like he was studying the Christian faith from the outside rather than entering into it. “…I came to feel that studying seventeenth century English Literature was really the same as studying Christianity. That was all they seriously cared about, and they cared enough, at a pinch, to kill or to be killed for their own particular brand of it. I was excited by this. As a lapsed Christian I felt I could imagine – just – how it would be to believe as they believed. At heart I knew this was a delusion. I was simply substituting aesthetic admiration for belief, and a real believer would probably tell me there was a special department in hell reserved for people who did that. All the same, it was the nearest I could get. When I read Henry Vaughan, for example, describing his experience of God:

“O joys! Infinite sweetness! With what flowers

And shoots of glory my soul breaks and buds!”

“It seemed to me that no one in the post-God era ever feels joy like that. The death of God has meant the death of joy – if joy means absolute certainty of eternal life. If a modern poet wrote those lines they would be about having sex, which doesn’t seem a very adequate substitute.” [14]

What a shame a man with such an opportunity of quizzing the Inklings and co didn’t discover the open secret of their inner life of joy for himself.

The next staircase contained a hint that a great battle had been fought between good and evil in Narnia, all revolving around the death of Aslan. There began to be military pennants and flags, knights in armour and more small lion toys as clues.

Narnian victory banquet

But the Great Dining Room was spread for a phenomenal banquet, with beautiful Christmas trees.

Van Dyck painting

There were displays of fruit and candles on every table beneath old master paintings.

Side table display

It was set to celebrate the victory of Aslan and the Narnian army over the White Witch and her evil hordes.

High King Peter’s chair

Each chair at the table had a name tag showing which guest was to sit there. Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (now called Kings and Queens of Narnia) had a chair with their names plus the gifts they had been given by Father Christmas that had helped them win the battle (except Edmund who had not been there to meet him). What could top this?

Aslan

Meeting Aslan himself, of course. This was surprisingly low key. As you can see from the photo, the lighting was not good nor the setting. Anyway, it was great to see small children (and adults) getting their photos taken with him and not seeming to mind. I suppose there was something appropriate about even the resurrected Aslan being humble and approachable, as opposed to the White Witch posing with her throne under a disco glitter ball.

Sculpture Gallery

Those of you familiar with the Kiera Knightley ‘Pride and Prejudice’ can perhaps remember the Sculpture gallery at Chatsworth that she walked through contemplating the statues supposedly at Pemberley. The gallery is now transformed into Cair Paravel with striped tents and banners with lions rampant.

Children’s requests to Santa

There were smaller Christmas trees made of paper tags on which children had written their requests to Father Christmas.

Thrones at Cair Paravel

And children were able to sit on thrones on a dais and be crowned as High King Peter, King Edmund, Queen Susan and Queen Lucy. When I was there it was lovely to see a boy in a wheelchair crowned with his brothers.

Marble lion

Of course it was hardly necessary to add a figure of a great lion to the Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth as the room finishes with two enormous lions like bookends

Marble lion

on either side of the huge doorway as one leaves.

Chatsworth shop

It was rather strange to suddenly be in the shop, even if there were C S Lewis’ Narnia books on sale. There were some toys for children too to help them play out the story at home. I heard a small boy requesting some pieces of plastic armour from his mother but she replied: “You can have a sword or a shield but we can’t afford both!” That must have been a let-down after all the excitement so far! I already had the Narnia books of course, so I contented myself with a book on the grand houses used in Jane Austen film and TV adaptations – oh, and some chocolate.

Tea rooms and Orangery

After that I went with my family to the tea rooms

Stable block

and we managed to stagger around a few more shops in the stable block and down to the magnificent Emperor fountain, blowing into thousands of droplets in the strong cold wind.

Chatsworth House

Looking at the house itself from the garden we were able to see that the window frames had been painted gold since our last visit. This apparently weathers better than ordinary paint and is cheaper for them in the long run – just a little household tip for you there! It was also noticeable as we left how many of the trees were leaning to one side because of the high winds on the peaks. We left before it got dark and there didn’t seem to be any flaming torches this time anyway. But the whole trip had been exhilarating and even joyful. I was glad to be able to share it with some of my family and I wish I could have taken all my family and friends.

Goodbye to Chatsworth

I hope these photos and commentary give you a taste of what it was like and a desire to experience again the excitement of C S Lewis’ Narnia this Christmas and the glory of the victory over evil and the salvation of humankind as depicted in the story of Aslan and Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.

A few years ago I had such a marvellous time at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire seeing their Christmas decorations and nativity that I vowed to go again someday. Not only is the house one of the most beautiful in Britain, the huge Christmas trees in every room, the vintage swags on the staircases and fireplaces, and the nativity with real animals in the stableyard, meant that it had been an unforgettable treat, plus flaming torches lighting our way as we drove away in the dark. The house is the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and dates back to the sixteenth century, but it has also posed as Darcy’s Pemberley for ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in both the Keira Knightley/Matthew MacFadyen film version and now the TV adaptation of P D James’ ‘Death Comes to Pemberley’, so catnip for Jane Austen fans. And when they announced that this year the Christmas decorations would be themed around C S Lewis’ ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, it was obvious that this was the year to go to Chatsworth again. I have spoken on Lewis and Narnia at various venues and have seen several excellent and creative attempts to decorate places to give a Narnia ‘experience’, so what would such an immense house with so many resources be able to offer?

So this week we made the hour’s drive from Nottingham to Bakewell in the Derbyshire Peak District. There was the obligatory ‘Brideshead’ moment as we approached the enormous building from the edge of the estate and saw the building’s magnificence at a distance. As you enter the Chatsworth itself you are greeted by an Air Raid Warden and scenes and music from the Second World War. This is because ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ of course is set at the beginning of the War and, as I’m sure you know, concerns the four Pevensie children who were evacuated to the countryside to avoid the bombing – very appropriate for Chatsworth as apparently a girls’ school called Penrhos College was evacuated here at that time too in reality, although sometimes it was so cold that their hot water bottles froze at night!

The first two Christmas trees that greet you in the entrance way are decorated with little London buses and there is a desk with 1940s items such as an old phone and newspaper which reminded me of Lewis’ desk at the Kilns. But then one walks through a doorway and into a short passage lined with fur coats and then… into Narnia!

Narnian Winter

A long corridor with spectacular white and silver and frosty trees and baubles, all leading up to –

The Lamp post

what else – the lamp post. Small white furry woodland creatures are hiding in the undergrowth and one is lulled into a false sense of security when suddenly…

Maugrim the Wolf

several enormous menacing wolves appear, one being Maugrim himself with the notice of the arrest of Mr Tumnus on the orders of the ‘Queen’.

Stone fountain

There was an area for children to dress up in long dresses and furs and cloaks as characters from the story. This overlooked an inner courtyard with a fountain and animals that had been ‘turned’ into stone to show the witch’s power in Narnia at that point.

Trees in Chapel

We then walked into the chapel, in itself a stunning place for worship filled with magnificent murals and statues and two of the biggest Christmas trees I’ve ever seen indoors. Christmas carols were playing in the background and people were standing around in awe at the sight.

Chairs in chapel

The tapestry chairs on either side reminded me of the thrones for the kings and queens of Charn, waiting to be awoken by Digory striking the bell – not perhaps a happy recollection but by this point even the ‘ordinary’ furnishings and carvings in Chatsworth were taking on a Narnian significance.

Tea with Mr Tumnus

We then turned left into the Oak Room, renamed Tumnus Towers, and found ourselves in Mr Tumnus’ living room all set out for tea. His kettle was whistling on the fire and a book entitled ‘Is Man a Myth?’ lay on the table, the cover photo looking suspiciously like the Duke of Devonshire! The man playing Mr Tumnus was probably rather old for the part, if he’ll forgive me saying, but did have magnificent furry trousers. But having tea with Mr Tumnus here was very appropriate as it was the Duchess of Devonshire in the 18th century who invented the habit of taking afternoon tea as a stop gap to tide one over as dinners were so late in the evening. There were two trees in his room, both decorated with gingerbread men. I had read a newspaper account beforehand of what would be in this Narnian experience so I had been expecting Mr Tumnus, but not what we could see from the next room –

Mr and Mrs Beaver

– right into the living room of Mr and Mrs Beaver! She is at her sewing machine and he is scrubbing his back in a bath in front of the fire (not sure where they got this from, but it was funny)! The walls made of logs was a nice touch and there were packets on a table such as wood chips for them to chew on and ‘incisor paste’ for cleaning their teeth, the old-fashioned packaging adding to a 1940s feel.

Father Christmas’ sleigh

One then walked out into the Chapel Corridor and was confronted by Father Christmas’ sleigh. Unfortunately he was not there in person (I probably would have fainted by this point) –

Father Christmas’ reindeer

– but the two reindeer were animatronic and moving as if they were about to eat the carrot and mince pie left out for them by children. Apparently each year, for over a hundred years, Chatsworth has a held Christmas party for the children of their estate workers during which Father Christmas really does come down the chimney! If we hadn’t realised it already, it was now obvious that here they can do things on a much bigger scale than the rest of us. And we were only at the beginning of our Narnian Christmas journey…

Part Two concerns Aslan, the White Witch and Turkish Delight.

Part Three concerns the victory of Aslan and the enthronement of the children at Cair Paravel.